The Reporters Are Bad at Reporting

Okay, everybody. Time for Journalism 101.

Suppose you saw the following headline on the news feature of your homepage: "Zookeeper Allegedly Ate Penguins for Breakfast"

What's wrong with this headline? Besides the obvious, I mean. Only a monster would eat penguins for breakfast. (While typing this, I actually misspelled "monster" as "mobster," which come to think of it is another possibility. But I digress.)

What about this one? "Penguin Claims He Ate Zookeeper's Toes in Retaliation"

When I was in college, I actually took Journalism 101. And by Journalism 101, I mean an entry-level editing class with a teacher who assumed we were all taking the class because we wanted to be journalists. Thus, he taught us editing only as it applied to journalism.

Although this teacher and I disagreed about my career aspirations, we both agreed that the news should only tell people what's happening. It should give only the facts; it should not tell people what to think about those facts.

Yet reporters, the teacher pointed our, betray the neutrality of the news all the time...especially through headlines.

If a headline says, "Zookeeper Allegedly Eats Penguin for Breakfast," it's already betraying neutrality by suggesting it's doubtful that the zookeeper actually ate the penguin. If a headline says, "Penguin Claims He Ate Zookeeper's Toes in Retaliation," it implies that the penguin claimed he ate the zookeeper's toes, but is the penguin really trustworthy? The headline is telling is exactly how credible this reporter thinks the penguin is.

Every time I see a headline like this, it makes me cringe.

So, just in case you are a journalist or will someday become one, let's review how to write a factual headline.

Step One: Say what happened.

That's it. There is no Step Two. However, I suspect Step One needs some further elaboration.

If you know for a fact that the zookeeper ate a penguin, just say so in the headline: "Zookeeper Ate Penguin for Breakfast."

If you don't know for a fact that the zookeeper ate the penguin, but the monkeys tell you that he did, don't write this: "Monkeys Claim Zookeeper Ate Penguin for Breakfast." "Claim" is a biased word. It sounds like you don't trust the monkeys. Write this instead: "Monkeys Say Zookeeper Ate Penguin for Breakfast." The reader can read what the monkeys have to say and then decide for his or her self whether to trust their words.

If the monkeys say that they think the zookeeper ate the penguin, you can write this: "Monkeys Say Zookeeper May Have Eaten Penguin for Breakfast." "May have" is a good phrase because it lets the readers know the monkeys don't know for sure without strongly favoring one possibility over the other.

The only time you should use "allegedly" in journalism is if you're directly quoting someone else. Like this headline: "'That Zookeeper Allegedly Ate a Penguin,' says Cheeky Monkey." And even then, I would think thrice before using such a quote.

And there you have it. Headlines as taught by Journalism 101. Now you can join in me in my annoyance with all the news reporters ever.

I feel the need to add a disclaimer that this blog is not a news source. It is not neutral; it is colored my own opinions and experience, and I've never pretended otherwise. Don't be misled by my desire for impartial news to believe that everything I write is impartial. It isn't. That's what sets blog posts apart from news articles.